Brian Thompson: I’ve had a cough that shakes trees

Why is it whenever you’re hacking. When you have tissue stuffed up your nose. When there are noises emanating from your lungs that sound like tree branches snapping. Like thunder crackling. Like little mice being squeezed. Why is it whenever you’re in this state, people always stare you right in the eyes and ask, “Are you sick?”

Oh, no. I’m fine, thank you. I always sound like this. Then I sneeze on their head.

Right on their head!

I’ve been weathering bronchitis, or some kind of bronchial funk, for the past two weeks. Nothing too major — I still have a pulse. But it’s lingering and dragging on.

All along, I have either sounded worse than I am, or I’m in absolute denial and sitting on death’s door. I know this because people say things to me like: “Don’t worry. The afterlife is a very nice place … kind of like Tahiti during the off-season.”

OK, so not exactly like that. But they look at me funny. Hear my voice — which sounds like someone trying to talk underwater — and say, “feel better, Brian.” Then they run away and try to sterilize themselves in the nearest bathroom.

“Don’t go near that man,” I hear them say, “he has the plague!”

Yeesh!

It isn’t the flu. Nothing aches. I’m not tired. Shoot, I was able to go run 5 miles one day. That’s not the sign of a dying man.

But I’ve had a cough that shakes trees, and it’s only now going away. Have I seen a doctor? Of course not. I’m convinced the medical world can’t heal me. It will just prescribe antibiotics I don’t need, further weakening my immune system for future illnesses, like fighting the coming zombie apocalypse. Do you think there will be antibiotics in that nightmare scenario?

So I trudge along, coughing, occasionally wheezing and stuffing wads of this or that up my nose. It’s led to some interesting situations. Like the night when I went to a speed networking event with soon-to-be-graduating college students. Students moved about a room, talking to professionals like me for maybe a minute before a whistle blew and they had to move on to the next person.

Everything was going along swimmingly … until I had a wretched coughing fit! Ever get one of those awful, un-tameable coughing fits when you’re sick? The kind where the tears start rolling down your face and your lungs feel like they’ve become dislodged and are now flapping about in your chest like a fish out of water? People stare and then run for the defibrillator, convinced you’re having a heart attack or are possessed by demons. Either way, they figure electricity will cure it.

This happened to me not five seconds after some poor girl sat down. To this day I feel terrible.

“Hi, how are you?” I asked. But I could feel it coming. My face started to cringe. It felt like I swallowed a live bee.

“So, tell me (cough, cough) what do you want to do when you graduate (wheeze),” I said, grimacing while trying to shake it off. But I could feel the monster trying to escape my lungs. I was fighting with all my power to keep it in. To this poor, impressionable, worried-about-the-future girl, the contorted look on my face no doubt screamed, “You disgust me! I can hardly stand to look at you!”

And I darted out of the room, hacking the whole way. They told me later the poor girl just sat there, staring at the wall, wondering where she had gone so wrong in her life to spark such a reaction.

My cough may have just destroyed someone’s promising future!

Classes haven’t gone much better. “Are you dying?” my students ask. “I saw someone who looked like you on a tour of the morgue.”

They’re very comforting, my students.

But I’m healing. The human body always fixes itself (cough, cough, hack, hack). People say I sound like I’m getting worse, but that’s how I know I’m getting better. “See?” I tell them. “It’s moved to my nose. That means it’s almost over. No really, LOOK ... IN ... MY ... NOSTRILS!” They usually run away.

I’m on the mend. The coughs are waning. I’m not going through tissues anymore. And soon I think I can go search out that girl and offer her some real career counseling. But first I need to make sure I won’t have another coughing fit. That could be devastating for the both of us.